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darthcamaro writes "The Linux Kernel Development Mailing List can be a hostile place for anyone. Now Intel developer Sarah Sharp is taking a stand and she wants the LKML to become a more civil place. Quoting her first message: 'Seriously, guys? Is this what we need in order to get improve -stable? Linus Torvalds is advocating for physical intimidation and violence. Ingo Molnar and Linus are advocating for verbal abuse. ... Violence, whether it be physical intimidation, verbal threats or verbal abuse is not acceptable. Keep it professional on the mailing lists.'"
The entire thread is worth a read, but Linus isn't buying it: "Because if you want me to 'act professional', I can tell you that I'm
not interested. I'm sitting in my home office wearing a bathrobe. The
same way I'm not going to start wearing ties, I'm *also* not going to
buy into the fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and
backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords. Because
THAT is what 'acting professionally' results in: people resort to all
kinds of really nasty things because they are forced to act out their
normal urges in unnatural ways.'
He also offered cookies in exchange for joining the dark side. An earlier reply by Linus further explains why he thinks it is OK to be mean: most of the time, he's only yelling at people who should know better (cultivating a crew of lead developers bound to him by Stockholm Syndrome?).

To be fair, anyone willing to take advice from a geek, who lives in his basement in a bathrobe, probably deserves the end result.

It does nothing but serve his ego (and yes I know I will get flamed for this). There are valid reasons to keep things civil on the surface. Claiming we should just 'let it all out' in a professional environment is obviously not the way that the rest of the professional world has gone, with good reason. It's called acting like an adult, and most professionals learned to do so at an early age.

Hilariously, I smell envy that even poster himself likely doesn't realize to be his/her motivator in this one. Fact is, he managed to get himself into the position where he doesn't have to care about office politics, political correctness or any other similar things that most of us have to deal with, regardless of our actual desire to do so. Most of us can only dream of ever reaching such a point in our lives.

And he has an excellent point - much of the office backstabbing does come from buildup of being unable to call someone who is an asshole or a bitch just that to the face to reduce the pressure. So instead you get typical office crap that every one of us who works in the office has likely had to put up with where people hold grudges unable to act on them until they can do something REALLY nasty. As in something that would actually impact life and work performance, instead of just calling someone a bad word and moving on.

If I were ever given a choice, I'd sure rather go for nasty expletives. But I wasn't. Linux on the other hand gets a choice, and he made it.

Linux is a meritocracy. This means you have more influence and say over things the more you contribute and know, this is based on real merits and contrary to a corporate world not a bogus title.

LKML has a lot of traffic. It is most time effective to just call out a thing which is bad. This has to be done in an unambiguous way. Direct language is the best way, it has the highest signal to noise ratio.

Furthermore due to meritocracy you do not need to suck up and kiss ass like you do in a corporate environment (where your underling might become your manager, who knows why, so hedge your bets by being very PC and polite).

So if you post bad stuff, you get shot down. Everybody gets the same rules applied to them. Why should some random woman be treated differently? Everyone is treated equally, that's good, right?

If she wants good treatment, shut the fuck up and write better code and submit it, instead of spending time whining about it. It's stupid to whine that someone hurt your feelings. Guess what? Nobody fucking cares. If your code sucks, you will NOT get praise. Live with it or change your profession.

Also, the purpose of LKML is to assist in making good software, not to run some feel good club.

You can call code bad while still being respectful to the person who wrote it.

Would you rather me say "Your solution doesn't work and this is why" or "You're a fucking moron and your code is crap." One of those comments is what we like to call "constructive" and the other is "hostile". One of them encourages the other person to do better and tells them what they did wrong. The other just tries to make them feel bad.

We have decided that in polite society we should be respectful to others. It's not about "kissing ass", it's about recognizing that people don't like to be bullied. People like people who are nice. It is also about recognizing that by treating people poorly you do not motivate them to do better, you motivate them to leave. Corporate America is not "professional" because we are sissies. We are "professional" because it easier to encourage dialog when people are not afraid.

Torvalds believes that he doesn't have to play by the rules because he is some Linux god and the rest of us can suck it. This is only true as long as the rest of us let him. People continue to be assholes and harass others as long as we sit here silent and take it.

If someone else managed to do his job better than him it would be trivial to do a fork. That this has not happened is a testament that his way doing things works. Simple as that. So what if he is verbally abusive.

If someone else managed to do his job better than him it would be trivial to do a fork. That this has not happened is a testament that his way doing things works. Simple as that. So what if he is verbally abusive.

The fact Linux is awesome and Linus is an abusive and profane manager doesn't mean the profanity and abuse is necessary to make Linux awesome. It could be it helps cut through the BS and makes things more clear and efficient, it could also be being clear and direct would be just as effective and the profanity actually makes people emotional and irrational.

"The fact Linux is awesome and Linus is an abusive and profane manager doesn't mean the profanity and abuse is necessary to make Linux awesome."

No. But the fact that Linus is sometimes abusive, plus the fact that he thinks that sometimes he has to be abusive, plus the fact that he leads no less than Linux as a testament to his management abilities does mean something.

He has a theory, he practices it and he has success backing him. You have a theory and... what else?

And of course there is another option. You can refuse to accept that things you don't like cannot change and choose to try to improve them while still contributing something worthwhile. I don't agree with Sarah Sharp's assessment, but I respect her for trying to make something she cares about better rather than abandoning it because she doesn't like some small part of the whole system.

I do think that we'd agree that professionalism is a good thing. I personally avoid cursing because it rarely improves communication and often gives people a reason to ignore what you have to say. Yet I highly respect someone saying what they mean in a way that makes it prefectly clear. For some people that means cursing or sounding harsh and I value that a lot more than sounding professional. If you can manage both, then it is what I think Linus and Sarah would both hope for, but if I have to choose between being professional and communicating successfully, I'll take the latter.

I appreciate people who can say "I disagree with you and don't like your decision" without also resorting to an ultimatium to "do it my way or I won't play."

Why? Linus has an excellent point, that often "professionalism" is an excuse to be abusive, just with a prettier veneer.

I personally prefer generally to communicate "professionally", but I'm also not dealing with something as important as the Lunix kernel. The greater degree of importance something has in the world, the more blunt I feel everyone is allowed to be and in fact is of benefit.

Also Linus comes from a culture that is more direct, and I don't see anything wrong with a project adopting the cultural attitudes of the leader.

On the other hand, many of the people "working" for linus are doing this on their own dime. Push them too far and they might say, "Fuck off, I have better things to do then get yelled at by a twat in a bathrobe."

You can accept this or not, but neither you, I nor Linus are going to live forever, nor is Linus' propensity to abuse people who are partially responsible for his own success.

As you say, "this is a part of what he is, and he won't change." Evidently you think that this is a quality worth respecting.

This is wrong. More importantly, this is "fanboyism" at its worst. I'm personally glad someone finally stepped forward and made Linus look like the childish brat he's become in the past few years. Just because he made that kernel you like doesn't mean every decision he makes is fucking gold. Get over it.

And hope that the person who takes over after him does not follow suit. And I do think it is a quality worth respect. We are full of politically correct idiocy in this world. It is past time people start to say what they really mean without fear of offending others. Nobody has the right to live their lives without being offended, and it is part of being an adult to learn to "take it like a man".

The fact that you would even state such abject stupidity means you don't understand the simple, salient point that has long ago been made. You would do well to avail yourself of the reams of tired, boring, and utterly meaningless conversations in the past where I eventually explained the simple point so that a moron like you can stop wasting all our time in the here and now.

If you want "maturity" as defined by some passive aggressive type of niceness that comes when you don't ever say what you are actually thinking, you are in the wrong place. We're here to get something done and you can take your sissy, pandering, liberal business-speak ethos and cram it into some corner that doesn't involve the rest of us who are trying to get something valuable done.

You took 5 lines to insult me in various ways and make a couple points about why impolite speech is more effective.

Frankly I think you would have been more clear if you just insulted my position. You said what you were thinking and you drifted off-topic, so what if I'm a moron, and why do you think I'm not trying to get something valuable done? Neither of those are relevant to the discussion.

Yes I'm polite, but I also think I've very direct, and I don't think I'd be any more clear if I used profanity.

Absolutely. When people criticize Michael Jackson for allegedly molesting children, I tell them the exactly same thing. It's a fact of life. It's impossible to make music that great without touching a few kids. Likewise it's impossible to write some code without impersonating a high school.

Yep. I used to sit about five feet from a guy who was in management (but not my management) who for some inexplicable reason disliked me. Not only did he dislike me, but he talked shit about me to other managers and employees behind my back. He was very nice to my face, though. I would never have known any of this if it weren't for a colleague and another manager who clued me into what this guy was saying. And, fortunate for me, these people always countered his comments, told him he was wrong, and otherwise stood up for me in his non-sense rally to bash me to people.

I would have rather he had just been an asshole to me and lay it out, so we knew where we stood.

As long as he doesn't dabble in hypocrisy, by complaining when someone is rude to him (and I have not heard of that kind of behavior, so I assume he doesn't mind), and as long as he has a point, I think it's both effective and entertaining. What's not to like?

For example, you work mostly through Greg. I don't think either of you
*planned* it that way, but it's likely because you guys work well
together.

See what I'm saying? People are different. I'm not polite, and I get
upset easily but generally don't hold a grudge - I have these
explosive emails. And that works well for some people. And it probably
doesn't work well with you.

And you know what? That's fine. Not everybody had to get along or work
well with each other. But the fact that it doesn't work with you
doesn't make it "wrong".

The English have mastered delivering withering insults very politely. Simply being polite does not make you "nice". Is it more "professional" to wrap your disdain for an idea in language that is courteous on the surface? Maybe. Is the emperor going to change? Unlikely.

The English have mastered delivering withering insults very politely. Simply being polite does not make you "nice". Is it more "professional" to wrap your disdain for an idea in language that is courteous on the surface? Maybe. Is the emperor going to change? Unlikely.

They got nothing on the French. Voltaire's criticism led to suicides. But regardless, this represents a change in Linus' historical behavior. It could just be stress, or it could hint at the onset of a mental illness. Increased aggression, changes in mood or attitude, impaired judgement, black and white or "us versus them" thinking... while many might chalk this up to poor manners on the internet, it could hint at something more substantial.

Either way, people are focusing on the behavior, but are neglecting to take notice of the fact that while the kernel-dev mailing list has always been, achem, heated... this is still a significant departure from baseline -- it's starting to make headlines in a big way too. People do not simply wake up one day and decide they're going to be abusive assholes -- there are triggers, changes to the person's environment or biology.

Separately, I'm not sure abusive language is ever good for the long-term health of a cooperative project -- it may not be a professional environment, but it's not exactly amateur hour either. Repeated abuse and disrespect is not conducive to a productive and cooperative environment. See also: The reason why there are so many flavors of BSD.

Yeah, as a Brit I'm somewhat confused by this article; is Linus being hauled over the coals for telling people off for making mistakes? Or for using "cuss" words? Or just both at the same time?

In the type of circles I move in, I really only think I've witnessed the following three attitudes when it comes to dealing with/confronting failure:People who'll call you a fucking idiotPeople who'll call you a pusillanimous carbuncle with the intellectual capacity of a particularly forlorn used condomPeople who won't really tell you whether you've fucked up or not, but will often go away thinking you've failed, and acting upon it, without giving you the chance to learn from your mistake or even show you you made one, all under the guise of "politeness" or "professionalism"

Assuming of course they're correctly identifying faults, of the three types, IMHO the first two are capable of forging a good working relationships whereas the third passively destroys relationships by having no feedback system. Sure, there's a difference in the degree of skin thickness required between types 1 and 2 but if you're the sort of person that can accept constructive criticism in the first place you're already doing better than most.

There are various degrees of the above of course, depending on the magnitude of the mistake, but when I fuck up, I'd prefer someone to tell me I've fucked up. Disguise the swearing with some floridity if you really feel you want or need to, but the intent is still the same and it's the intent that's all important IMHO.

Linus' job is more than just that of a manager, he's also a mentor and a teacher as well. Occasionally this means hauling out a particularly daft member of the school for everyone else to see and making an example of them. If Linus doesn't tell people off when they start going wrong sooner or later someone pushes there luck and eventually you get 20MB patches dumped in rc8 to break the last 10MB patch that went in in rc7.

I don't know if it's a cultural taboo about the word fuck and friends (it seems that way on slashdot sometimes with lots of people self-editing themselves with pithless hackronyms like "BS") but I've not met anyone in/from europe (including Finns) or any commonwealth country that doesn't make liberal use of swearing, just adjusting the level of it for the audience. "I've fucked up the teas" has the same literal meaning as "Bloody hell, I've put too much milk in" or "I'm sorry ma'am, but the head footman appears to have upended the teapot", merely adjusted for either politeness or expediency. Fuck is a highly expedient word. Linus isn't polite (he's spent 20yrs herding cats and to be honest given the intractably varied milleu he inhabits I would consider politeness an actual hundrance) and is expedient and to be honest I think he uses much less profanity than I'd expect for a person in his position. Every time I've seen a/. headline about Linus going off on one, the ticking off he's given always seems to have been warranted for technical reasons, I've never seen him threaten someone. As far as most technical people go, I'd go so far as to cal him highly eloquent, and I don't see what's ineloquent about the occasional "fuck". He didn't even use that this time, he was merely telling people in his own sardonic way that they need to rattle sabres once in a while, and his response to Sarah's email was spot-on, deadpan, and attempting to defuse the situation:

That's the spirit.

Greg has taught you well. You have controlled your fear. Now, releaseyour anger. Only your hatred can destroy me.

Come to the dark side, Sarah. We have cookies.

Linus

Storm in a bloody teacup.

More directed to the OP, for what it's worth, I don't think there's anything inherently superior about british/english swearing, I just think it's sometimes seen as supe

I just recently graduated with a degree in mathematics, and a minor in computer science. I can program well, for the amount of experience I have, and I would love to get better. I, personally, think that one of the best ways that I could get better is to contribute to OSS projects. However, I can't lie, reading stories about the abusiveness of the community is a huge turn off. Now, I realize that I am probably not one of those people who 'should know better,' and I realize that really extraordinary outbursts are rare (which is why they get reported on, obviously), but I still have enormous trepidation about joining the OSS community. I feel I may have talent and ideas to contribute, but when I see stories about the way that people get treated when they make mistakes, it makes me want to avoid the whole thing. I wouldn't be doing it for money, I would be doing it for fun, and to learn. And as far as I'm concerned, if I'm going to be abused for making mistakes, I am not having fun, and I am likely not learning much either. Now, again, I understand that this is not usually the case as far as OSS development, but I'm just relaying my gut reaction to hearing about behavior like that.

Also, I know it's rather passe to reply to your own comment, but there were 13 other comments posted while I was reading and writing my post, and in that time 9 comments were posted supporting that kind of harsh, abusive, abrasive technique. I think I couldn't sum up any better myself why I fear getting into OSS. With this behavior so acceptable to the community, why should I even try to get into it? I wouldn't put up with it at a job for money, yet I'm expected to just ignore it, or quit the game, when I am contributing my own effort, free time, and enthusiasm?

Some of the high visibility mainline projects may be more prone to intolerance and abuse of, for want of a better phrase, newbie errors. You could try dipping your toes in the water in one of the useful if unglamorous projects that might be less harrowing. There are various orphan projects out there, others that get little attention, and some potentially useful but incomplete ones as well. Then there are projects designed for the newcomer. You might want to take a look at this:

Respect, even when faced with inexperience or incompetence, does exist in workplaces "where work is actually being done". If you have never experienced this, I'd suggest taking a good hard look at your own attitude. You reap what you sow, as they say.

I work in a pretty successful technology company. We have a "no brilliant jerks" policy. Doesn't matter how good someone is, if they're actively corrosive to working with people, they're gone.

That doesn't mean I don't see developers getting into heated discussions about the merits of technical issues. But those heated discussions are professional, utterly impersonal, and without a shred of meanness. They just disagree.

This whole "good engineers are assholes" myth is, well, a myth that has been promulgated by a group of people more dominated by assholes than by good engineers.

I applaud Sarah Sharp and, blankinthefill, I want you know not all environments are like this. Not even all successful FOSS projects.

No, his methodology ensures that he gets experienced developers who don't mind an abusive boss. I consider myself experienced, but I would never work for a boss who dares to scream at me. I'd be out of the door before the echoes subside.

No, his methodology ensures that he gets experienced developers who don't mind an abusive boss.

Which implies that his successor is also likely to be an abusive boss --- and that the bosses of every large scale FOSS project will take their cues from them. It is the culture Linus helps sustain and perpetuates that worries me, not the man himself.

I think you, like most of the replies, have missed my point. I don't want to do Linux Kernel development now. Perhaps not ever. However, the Linux Kernel is one of the biggest OSS projects out there, and they are very visible to the public eye, especially those people who are interested in OSS but don't have any connections with the community or any projects going on. I'm saying that this kind of abrasiveness can be highly detrimental to peoples desire to get involved in OSS, which is a terrible shame. I understand that sometimes you NEED abrasiveness, or you need to get things done quickly. But you can get that kind of performance out of people without verbal abuse, or the threat of physical abuse. Yet these actions are the kind of things that I read a lot about when I read about big OSS projects that come up quite often. Perhaps this is just an artifact of the way news about things gets reported... when things go well, we hear nothing. But the point I was trying to make is that these projects are role models for the OSS movement. And yeah, as one reply put it, no one owes me anything. But I think you have to look what kind of harm you may be doing to the community as well. Sure, you get some great developers that are willing to put up with the bullshit... but how many potentially great developers have you driven off because they don't want to deal with it? (Also, as an aside, I enjoy the fact that I got troll mods for honestly stating the effect that reports of abusive behavior has on my desire to join the OSS with open arms and willing heart.)

I'm sorry, but at this point in my programming life, I don't have the knowledge to be able to stand up to some dev with 10 or 15, or hell, even 5, years of real experience, and tell them why they're wrong, and I'm right.

And that is why Linus has absolutely no time for you or your ideas. He's maintaining one of the biggest projects out there and doesn't care about your feelings. Put up or shut up and get the hell out.

But don't forget that the vast majority of projects out there are not this cut throat. The vast majority of projects are also not this big and this fundamental either. There are plenty of projects that would love your contributions at this stage of your career. The Linux kernel is absolutely not one of those projects.

I don't fear criticism. I embrace it. I WANT criticism, with one caveat. I want USEFUL criticism, not rampant abuse. Now, I understand that in place like Kernel Development, you're not working with people who are green in their development skills. But the point I was trying to make is that I think that exceptionally visible abusive behavior can set a model for others to follow. It also creates the idea in people looking in from the outside that their work is not desired, because they know that they will make a multitude of mistakes and take time to learn, and they see that, instead of being taught what their mistakes were through useful criticism, they will merely have abuse thrown at them. Now, I'm in NO WAY claiming that all OSS projects are like this! Far from it. I know that many OSS projects are very open and welcoming, with a desire to foster and grow new talent. But that doesn't remove the niggling fear in the back of my mind that I will be treated in the same way that I see experienced developers being treated in many cases

You need to have the skin of a thousand rhino and the determination of the super-est of all supermen to push your idea across the many seasoned, and equally thick-skinned developers.

So having a good idea well developed and code that is written cleanly and clearly isn't important, it is more important to be able to browbeat others into liking it.

The so-called "abusive languages" is but a mechanism to weed out ideas which are not fully thought-over.

And here I thought that a clear and concise technical discussion would be a way to weed out ideas that are not fully thought-over. Or simply saying "your idea is not fully developed and it will not appear in the kernel." Who knew that the only way to do that was to be verbally abusive and insulting?

I think it speaks volumes that the concept of "acting professionally" seems to mean only not wearing a bathrobe when in private to some. I think the phrase "unclear on the concept" was developed for people like that.

If you can't stand the heat, dear Sir, I suggest you to get out of the kitchen.

It's interesting you use a kitchen analogy in this discussion. For several years I've been watching Gordon Ramsay in his various rant-prone self-promotional programs. For the last couple of months I've been watching MasterChef on BBC America with Michel Rue. The difference is that Gordon Ramsay is a foul-mouthed abusive fellow who can do nothing but yell and insult the people competing in his programs when they make the tiniest mistake, and Michel Rue's harshest comment has been along the lines of "that needed more seasoning" or "that was too pink for my taste". When Ramsay's folks bring him poorly produced food he throws pans and pots; Rue wrinkles his nose a bit and says "that wasn't your best work". The other difference is that Ramsay's contestants produce zero-star pablum and Rue gets one-star creative performances from his.
It seems one feels the need to express his superiority at every chance, the other wishes to develop talents in others. They are both good at achieving their goals. I'll leave it to the reader to guess which goal I think is more worthy.

I once read a study of string quartets and communication methods. Some quartets were nice to each other and polite and tried not to hurt each other's feelings. Others insulted each other and said just what they thought.

The quartets that were willing to insult each other, and even sometimes get into fights, ended up playing music much more as a team, whereas the 'polite' quartets played poorer music, because instead of resolving disputes, they ended up each playing their own way.

Linus doesn't insult people, he insults what they do, when they do stupid things. Don't break the build/submit poorly written patches/etc and there isn't a problem. It is not personal at all.

Sarah:
> Let's discuss this at Kernel Summit where we can at least yell at each
> other in person. Yeah, just try yelling at me about this. I'll roar
> right back, louder, for all the people who lose their voice when they
> get yelled at by top maintainers. I won't be the nice girl anymore.
> Linus:
That's the spirit.

Greg has taught you well. You have controlled your fear. Now, release
your anger. Only your hatred can destroy me.

Violence, whether it be physical intimidation, verbal threats or verbal abuse is not acceptable. Keep it professional on the mailing lists.

Not acceptable? By who's standards?

It's seems acceptable by the law in most countries that matter for the development of the linux kernel.

It seems acceptable by the main dude (Linus)

It seems acceptable by the developers, as they could have forked and started their own project with a more acceptable mailing list policy.

Who is it not acceptable to? and why can't those people make their own fork or simply not participate in the mailing list? (besides Sarah Sharp) If we were losing lots of talented developers because they just couldn't bear the mailing list, that would be a different story.

There is no absolute morality of the way things should be. There is what works. If you have a way to make something work better, no one is stopping you.

Who is it not acceptable to? and why can't those people make their own fork or simply not participate in the mailing list? (besides Sarah Sharp) If we were losing lots of talented developers because they just couldn't bear the mailing list, that would be a different story.

Honest question: how would you know if you were losing lots of talented developers? Not many people are going to speak up to let you know that your behavior is toxic. They'll just leave and take their skills elsewhere.

There is no absolute morality of the way things should be. There is what works. If you have a way to make something work better, no one is stopping you.

This isn't really related to the main discussion, but it's such a terrible attitude that I felt compelled to comment. Slavery works. Human experimentation works. Spying on every citizen in the country works. Morality matters. Being rude to people on a mailing list really isn't a big deal, morality-wise, but let's not go saying that the ends always justify the means.

...with their faux outrage at Linus' "tantrums." They're not, if you read context, but this isn't about context. This "controversy" is all about slamming Linus personally and Linux by implication by comparing his management style against a non-existent ponies-and-rainbows environment. And this isn't the first time it's happened here.

There was this one customer/client/coworker (yeah, fucked-up business relationship), who just did not get what was going on. I tried being polite. I tried using all his lingo, "actioning" this and whatnot. I tried. It got me nowhere.

One phone call where I straight-up said "that problem was *your* fuckup, and I am tired of cleaning up your mess then getting blamed by you for it because you weren't even aware of the problem until I took care of it", and that got me further than months of politeness.

Hell, we still seem to get along. I think we've been communicating even better now that I've stopped "artificially limiting" my communications. I actually just made a note to myself to yell at him to check his code before he checks it in - there was a SQL file with an *obvious* syntax error, one that our standard IDE (which he uses) highlights...

And there was never any verbal abuse. We were all good and we all trusted one another to know our parts of the code. Pretty much the only time I ever saw a voice raised was when one of our guys got pretty well fucked over by a developer who was assigned part-time to the team. He'd worked a few months on a piece of code and claimed it was finished, and we'd just discovered that it wasn't really even actually started.

I've worked projects since then where I'd wished I could verbally abuse co-workers. There's a general theme there. All those people who I wanted to abuse sucked. I think the moral of this story is, if you don't want to be verbally abused, try sucking less.:-P

... is fucking complicated. Especially if you have a good idea of what principles need to be followed as how to make decisions on what stays and what goes in terms of quality or goal of the overall project.

There's lots of people out there who THINK they have skill but are garbage since most people suffer from the Dunning Krueger effect in a similar way that most people believe they are 'above average'.

"The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes."

The problem is as you advance in skill you have limited time and options in order to convey the vast warehouse of knowledge in your brain as whether to something stays or goes on any given project. Any project has a tendency to become a big mess or fall apart over time since. How many OSS projects are started only to be abandoned? Lots.

Someone has to make the big decisions and when you have seen and worked on so many projects you develop techniques to quickly shut down bad ideas and often time that means being direct and even rude to the clueless because you simply don't have the time, energy, means to communicate to the other party on what's and why's.

Greg, the reason you get a lot of stable patches seems to be that you
make it easy to act as a door-mat. Clearly at least some people say "I
know this patch isn't important enough to send to Linus, but I know Greg
will silently accept it after the fact, so I'll just wait and mark it
for stable".

I posted on Sarah Sharps' blog. I didn't use profanity, I even quoted Eleanor Roosevelt: "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." I disagreed with her and stated that the most vile and ruinous censorship starts with a call for civility and that these are almost always from dubious motivations.

So, low and behold, it was moderated out of existence. It seems to me that Sarah has no interest in alternate viewpoints. It is her blog and she has the right to delete comments, but it is quite telling that she will silence a voice which does not agree with her while she is saying she wants to protect people's voices. Her calls for "civility" can be seen as nothing less than a call for censorship. We all must resist this sort of behavior because it is a direct attempt to diminish free speech and impose one person's morality on a larger group.

From one of the more recent things he engaged his primary flame-cannon over, the person he aimed it at did screw up pretty badly and for no apparent reason (I mean, seriously, submitting code that you don't know if it works and you admit is probably not necessary? Don't do that).

So no, I don't think he's a dick for the sake of being a dick - he's a dick because people shouldn't be submitting things that are broken and that kind of person deserves to be told off.

From one of the more recent things he engaged his primary flame-cannon over, the person he aimed it at did screw up pretty badly and for no apparent reason (I mean, seriously, submitting code that you don't know if it works and you admit is probably not necessary? Don't do that).

So no, I don't think he's a dick for the sake of being a dick - he's a dick because people shouldn't be submitting things that are broken and that kind of person deserves to be told off.

As the main target for said outburst, it was definitely an epic f*ckup on my part. When I got the email, I pretty much chuckled and then said I need to do some damage control. I was not in any way offended.
Linus later said:

For example, my latest cursing explosion was for the x86 maintainers,
and it comes from the fact that I *know* they know to do better. The
x86 tip pulls have generally been through way more testing than most
other pulls I get (not just compiling, but even booting randconfigs
etc). So when an x86 pull request comes in that clearly missed that
expected level of quality, I go to town.

Nothing at all. That is just the "PC Card" that is played whenever rude or abusive people don't like to be told they are acting like wanton children. It's their excuse to act as rude as they like for the sake of the attention it brings them.

Yours is not a fair statement. She’s been contributing to the Linux kernel for (as far as I can tell after a quick Google) 5 years or more. She’s not ‘attempting to join [the] community’; she’s already part of the community.

And she’s attempting to change it from within. Nothing, ipso facto, wrong with that.

Yours is not a fair statement. She’s been contributing to the Linux kernel for (as far as I can tell after a quick Google) 5 years or more. She’s not ‘attempting to join [the] community’; she’s already part of the community.

And she’s attempting to change it from within. Nothing, ipso facto, wrong with that.

Okay, in that case she's been a part of it for a while now and has (so far as I know) suddenly decided she doesn't like the way things are. That's fine. Asking for change and such is fine to a point. However, this is also closely related to the ridiculous idea that people have a right not to be offended or to hear things they don't like. No such right exists.

If they are unwilling to change, and I unsurprisingly tend to agree with Linus's stance on the fakery involved in being "professional", then she can either deal with it or leave. The people on that list were the way they were long before she got there even if she has been involved with it for the last few years.

If you ask a humble question or make a polite request to someone who represents a system (political, corporate, cultural etc.) and get an aggressive response, you have acted politically incorrect.
It's what you say to whom, not how you say it.
Linus Torvalds might be a rebel in the world of tech giants but in the community of linux kernel developers, he is a person of power and should take it seriously when someone points out a problem.

And no one did this better than Steve Jobs from what I heard from people who've been in meetings with him. In the corporate world, essentially the CEO, a few execs, and star sales members, can get away with being foul mouthed and abusive but absolutely everyone else has to be polite. So what happens if that you get some major culture shock of seeing unprofessional behavior when you find yourself in a meeting with the CEO, however you also get that culture shock if you start working on open source.

the CEO, a few execs, and star sales members, can get away with being foul mouthed and abusive but absolutely everyone else has to be polite.

That may be the case in the corporate world. But Linus will take it as well as dish it out.

I have often seen this same "enforced politeness" tried on other mailing lists, and the result is always the same. The "wizards" soon migrate somewhere else, and the mailing list becomes nothing but a bunch of clueless (but polite) noobs commiserating with each other.

It is important in a creative-technical environment. To be creative you need to be comfortable and many people will be very uncomfortable if they hear a lot of verbal abuse going on, or are worried knowing that any mistake will result in a tirade, or are just tired of the non stop use of "fucking" as the only adjective and adverb ever used. Sure, if it's rare occasions that you're down right rude then that's ok, but this sort of behavior is often regular and ongoing.

Linus isn't a dick though; indeed, he's quite laid-back and personable. When he criticizes someone like this, his criticisms are almost universally very accurate, and he only uses "extreme" language when (1) the person he's addressing did something really stupid ("merely stupid" isn't enough) and (2) that person really should have known better (so he doesn't tend to do this to strangers, only people he's well acquainted with, and has some trust in). He doesn't just call people names, he makes detailed technical arguments which happen to be decorated with er, expressive language.

This particular style is very common in the tech world, and if anything, Linus is far better than most, because he strictly sticks to technical criticisms; his language may be extreme, but for him, it isn't personal—if he is wrong, he'll very quickly admit it and apologize. Almost all of the time, the conversation quickly calms down and settles into a discussion of how to make things right. Note that this makes him vastly better than average: there are many others in the tech community who do take things personally, and won't back down no matter how obviously wrong they are.

This style isn't to everyone's tastes, and to someone who isn't familiar with Linus or the LKML, I guess it can be startling to see one of these exchanges. Maybe there are times when he goes too far. But claims that he's "abusive" are simply laughable. Things are not always as they appear at first glance...

I think (2) is something people often miss. If you're a n00b who posts something stupid on LKML, you are not going to get massive old-school-Usenet-style flames. When heated LKML arguments make it to Slashdot, it's almost always a case where both sides are actually reasonably known, like the maintainers of two different Linux subsystems having strong disagreements over direction. You don't find Linus flaming a college kid, both because that would be unnecessarily mean, and because it wouldn't be worth his time to write out long heated posts just to rebut n00bs.

However this is also what many people complain about with bad managers. There are many ways to handle problems and not all of them involve yelling and abuse. It affects more than just the person receiving the chewing out, the bystanders are also influenced and may feel that they're in a hostile environment (ie, stressed out to never make a mistake lest they get same treatment). There are managers who strongly felt that yelling was the proper way to motivate people, however those managers are now much more rare because companies are more aware of the problems and crack down on it.

Ie, the old saying of "you attract more flies with honey than vinegar" covers this subject, as well as books like "How to win friends and influence people".

In this case I think the abuse is in doing the chewing out in public. That is fully intended to embarrass that person as well as intimidate others. A private message would have also served the purpose to correct the developer, and especially if the developer doesn't mind emails full of expletives then Linus could go crazy in that private email. I am certain there are people out there who shy away from Linux kernel development precisely because of the culture on those mailing lists. Some people thrive on stress and others wilt under it.

No... but you really can't expect normative social behavior from an aspie, particularly after he's been the effective king of a feudal society for about 22 years now. Lieutenants who are effectively feudal lords who have sworn fealty to the king, it's a classic mutual security game.

The biggest problem this arrangement has is... it works. It doesn't work as well as other mutual security arrangements, such as globocop, but it can be successful, particularly for volunteer organizations.

One property of the arrangement, however, is that feudal lords build walls between their fiefdoms. This makes it very hard to change anything that requires crossing multiple fiefdom boundaries, so if you want to change an API, a globocop arrangement is more conducive to negotiating API contracts (think of it as agreeing on diverting the location of a stream crossing between neighbors). Linux demonstrates similar problems.

Either way, unless there is someone elected to filter the comments (a majordomo), the king is going to say whatever the king wants to say.

Most of the time when people complain about political correctness, it's because they the self-discipline or the intelligence necessary to compose a polite reply. Clearly Linus is not lacking in intelligence, but he seems short on common sense here.

Political correctness, when done well, is a more effective weapon than boorishness. Calling someone a fool is easy, but crass and wasteful. In the eyes of the audience it lowers you to the level of the fool, and you have to work harder to prove you aren't. Giving someone else the opportunity to open their own mouth and prove themselves a fool, now that's economical. They'll happily blather out their inanity on their own, if you let them.

I've always thought that political correctness is just another excuse for the educated elites to look down on everyone else.

Offensiveness doesn't come from words, it comes from the thoughts and actions behind those words. We've gone from nigger to negro to black to african-american back to black...and guess what? Racism hasn't gone away. All you do is replace one word with another word that has the exact same meaning. That's not progress; that's just confusion and wasted effort. Racists will still be racists no matter what words they're using to express it.

Which is essentially the same argument Linus is using -- assholes will be assholes no matter how you dress them up; why waste time and energy trying to sweep that under the rug?

There is nothing wrong with being polite when you judge it to be adequate. There is a lot wrong with being forced to be polite when you don't judge it adequate because someone feels offended.

Language's main objective is to transmit information. When you stop using words and expressions because you think they are rude, or offensive, when you stop saying things because you think people will be hurt you are altering the meaning of what you want to transmit, because no two words mean exactly the same thing.

Sometimes it is necessary to do so, but doing so as a principle cripples the language, and when you cripple the language you sooner or later cripple critical thinking that opposes the mainstream thinking.

That is the whole technique used in 1984 by introducing the Newspeak. You should read this book, it will be enlightening I promise. You will see a lot of similarities between the the Politically Correct doctrine and the books's Nationalist doctrine that was indoctrinated into people.

The act of trying to avoid being offensive, is, in and of itself, offensive to some people.

To whit, Linus Torvalds finds it offensive. QED.

This means that political correctness is fundementally faulted at its very conception, and can never be satisfied.

In the instances of verbal slurs, the creation of "inoffensive surrogates", as often tendered by political correctness advocates, simply shift the problem and do NOTHING to fix it. Take for instance, calling somebody stupid, vs calling them "mentally challenged". They mean the same thing, and are equally offensive.

Same with monikers for race; for instance, people with very dark skin of african origin:

Negro->colored->black->"african american"

The fact of the matter, is that using *any* term to draw attention to the skin color of a person, to distinguish a racially profiled stereotype, is equally offensive.

To whit,

"The prefferential treatment of african americans in the college entrance exams has led to a sharp decline in student achievement scores."

The sentence is just as offensive if you use "colored", "black", or any other colorful descriptor.

The same is true of descriptors for men who like to bang other men.

"Effeminate"->'poofter'->queer->gay->"homosexual male"

It isn't the words you say, it is the way you say them, that causes offense, but the PC crowd never gets this, and instead just comandeers word after word, after word, in its relentless and futile attempt to eradicate the intent behind those words. The result is that previously benign clinical terms like "homosexual" start to get lurid connotations, when previously they were absolved from those implications, because of words like "faggot". Deleting "faggot" from the dictionary does not make everyone stop harboring negative views about homosexual males. All it does is make a previousy useful word no longer useful, as all the malign implication of the slur gets transferred.

I would much rather have people shout about "faggots", and expose just what kind of people they are by its use, than have perfectly useful terms like "homosexual" corrupted, because of a fundamentally faulted worldview gone wild.

So, I side with Torvalds with this issue. Is his use of profanity reasonable? Probably not. Is his argument about why he needs to be allowed to use profanity when he feels necessary, perfectly rational and well founded? Absolutely.

Profanity is intended to convey beligerance. Deleting profanity does not make people have to resort to civility, it makes them coopt civilized language for profane use. Profanity serves a valid role in human communication. Stop trying to delete it. You can't.

Is it really a chance to grab power? If she can assert her will in this, does she become "a voice to be reckoned with"?

I saw a really mediocre movie once where it was asserted that when guys have an argument, they get it right out in the open, do a lot of chest beating, and then get to working together. Women on the other hand will play everything behind the scenes - cloaking it all in an air of civility while they sharpen their knives.

Since I saw that movie (ashamed to say I saw it, but if you happen to remember the reference go ahead and out yourself), I've notice that it's actually a very true statement.

It all derailed when it started referring to "verbal threats" and "verbal abuse" as "violence". Sorry, but unless a dev is at my door with a baseball bat, it's just words. Additionally, we've all dealt with people who are crude, terse, mean, or just flat out obnoxious prima-donas. It only impacts you if you give a shit. I've dealt with some of those in my career and all that matters to me is whether they are productive and talented. Telling me "you made a stupid fucking mistake" isn't any worse than "Please don't take this too harshly and please don't think I am picking on you. I like you and you are a swell fellow and all. However, I feel it is necessary that I impress upon you that this isn't really a bug and having this trivial and non-broken thing filed as a bug has consumed a little bit of our time that we would rather not be wasting on things like this. Also, here is a pat on the back and an atta-boy so you don't feel I am being mean to you, okay?".

Granted, it might be a little unprofessional to use crude language with people. CEOs and other muckety-mucks do it all the time, however. It's also a little different between using crude language and lashing out at people with crude language to insult them and put them down. But, again, that's just the way things are and it is just the way some people are. It really does not have to impact you in the slightest if you don't want it to (and it doesn't hurt to learn to give it back - especially if you can do so cleverly, with wit, and without the matching vulgarity).

I don't doubt this sort of thing does put some people off from contributing and participating. I sure as hell wouldn't participate in anything that involved Linus and other well-known and super-smart guys, because I know I'm not at their level and I would just constantly be on the receiving end of "how fucking stupid can you be?!". But you know what? Maybe that's okay. Maybe it weeds out people who don't have the spine to deal with it or who take everything so personally that everything has to become a drama rather than just getting work done.

Of course, Linus could be less of an asshole (even when his points are very fair). But I don't see why he should feel he *has* to be less of one. *shrug*. I also think it's a little different than if he was someone's direct boss in a workplace and he was walking outside of his office to constantly berate, ride, ridicule, and harass his employees for being totally incompetent.

Specially if you in fact made a stupid fucking mistake. And here comes the nut of the issue: how many time does Linus tell somebody that "made a stupid fucking mistake" and it resulted that in the end it was not a stupid fucking mistake?

You know, first well-know "harsh" conversation from Linus was the one with Tanembaum, if you see my point... and he was back then just a pimply young fellow.

Because writing a terse couple sentences with vulgarities targeted at you in a mailing list that you voluntarily subscribe to for a project you voluntarily participate in is exactly the same as someone stalking you in meatspace, on your property, incessantly harassing you?

This isn't about a woman. This is about someone new coming along and being surprised that the mailing list isn't even remotely like normal corporate politeness. The attitudes before this new person arrived are what's toxic, the difference is that the old timers have built up an immunity to the toxins so that they don't notice it anymore. Nothing at all in this feels like someone played a victim card.

The catch is that you can be stuck in both worlds. You're required at your corporate job to treat coworkers with respect but at the same time your job requires you to interact with a group that doesn't work that way and that you actually find distasteful. You can't back out of either world without serious drawbacks (ie, losing your job).

I think there's some false dichotomy from Linus here. He seems to split it up into either acting that way he does or else it becomes lying and backstabbing, because that's what he thinks "acting professionally" means. Ie, either he wears a bathrobe or else he has to wear a tie.

The backlash here from Linus is not because she's a woman and poeple should stop bringing that card into it. The backlash is because of the anti-corporate attitudes on that mailing list, they want to keep their fun club fun instead of having it be professional.

Sarah Sharp is not a new person on LKML. She's the USB3 host controller maintainer. She's been there for a while, and she totally overreacted. Linus' original message was a tongue-in-cheek one talking about Greg Kroah-Hartman (who is a fairly large guy while Linus is not):

"Have you guys *seen* Greg? The guy is a freakish giant. He *should* scare you. He might squish you without ever even noticing."

Sarah's reaction was, "Seriously, guys? Is this what we need in order to get improve -stable? Linus Torvalds is advocating for physical intimidation and violence..."

Anyone who takes Linus' comments as a serious suggestion needs their head examined. It was *clearly* meant as a joke.

I know a few "cool women" who hate being the "cool" one, but fear retaliation from guys if they actually speak up. When you work in a "man's world" and you hear guys say things like " although there are women that are cool and reasonable and men who are drama queens, this one is a stereotypical female drama queen in all her glory, and people like her are those that make the lives of other competent and cool women a lot harder." what are you to do? They then shut up and suffer because they like the challenge of their job, just not the hostility of their coworkers. They suffer as the "cool woman" because they don't want to risk retaliation or ostracization.

To me, she is a "cool woman" - she's willing to tell guys, Linus no less, to fuck off. Literally - read her email, she drops a few f-bombs herself, not what I consider stereotypical drama queen.

I'm very honest and direct with the people who work with and for me. And yet magically I'm not an asshole like Linus. If you're incapable of delivering an honest and direct message without abusing people, then you're a shitty human being.

Honest and direct: "This is not good enough. The logic is flawed and the code is sloppy. Go back and do it again".Asshole: "How fucking stupid do you have to be to write something like this crap".

Do you follow LKML (all 15K messages/month)? If you only pay attention to the messages that get covered on Slashdot then you're going to have a pretty warped view of how he communicates.

The majority of the time Linus is direct but not abusive. On the rare occasions that he uses what could be called abusive language there is usually a recurring problem and more subtle means of communication have not been effective.